Dec 8, 2011 1:40 AM

I am currious to hear about what everyone thinks about the new lending thing with Kindle. I have been doing some research tonight and it looks pretty cool with some great potential, and I wanted to hear other opinions on it.

I have just enrolled my books into this. I sell a lot of Kindle books (primarily UK) but have only ever sold a couple on smashwords and B&N. A few months ago I put my smashwords edition on hold and have now made my Lulu pdf versions private as Kindle want exclusivity for three months.

To be honest I can't understand why (with the exception of the iPad) why anyone would rather get a different ereader i.e. Kobo instead of a Kindle. Kindle is the buzz word like ipod, iphone, ipad so all the 'cool kids' are getting them. Lets hope readers now continue to buy my books as well as get them on loan.

I agree. I get far more sales with kindle than b&n, but I do like smashwords, but still the sales are just better with kindle, so I am trying it out, and if I don't like it after the 3 months then I can go back to what I was doing. At least we still get to have our paperbacks up and running, which I am almost ready to do, so I am thinking that it could be a really good boost on sales. I have the kindle on my phone, but I am thinking that I am going to just go buy one of the actual devices. They have come so far down in price, and as many books as I buy I think the program would be worth it for me to sign up on. There are still a lot of books that I will want to own, but this is a good way to read the book first to see if it is worth buying, because I have bought a lot of them that the first few chapters are good, and then the rest sucks.

I enrolled today. I'll let you know in a few weeks whether it worked, or not. The way I see it (and someone else on this thread said something similar) is that this first book is an introduction, of sorts, to get me started in this endeavor (writing). I'd like to sell enough copies to pay some expenses directly related to publishing, but I'm really viewing the whole thing as a hobby. If I have to spend a few bucks, or 'forego' a few bucks, I'll consider it an investment that might reap some dividends when I publish my next book. It's cheaper than golf and where I live there are only a handful of days good for golf anyway.

Melodyanne : enclosing a message I just receive regarding kindle from my e-mail. I believe that kindle it the future. If the link don't post you know my e-mail . It won't let me do it. I don't think it's a scam! Sparky1

Mark Coker posted an analysis of it over at the Smashwords blog. You can read it here.Gotta wonder - if Amazon's competition drys up, will the 70% royalty (or even the 35%) be far behind and go the way of the dodo bird?

Don't actually quite get the math of the program. There's a pool of money - to be shared??? The more authors/titles/borrows the smaller the share per book? It seems very variable. Also, you can always put your book on Amazon for free for promotional purposes on your own for a while without joining.

Guess we'll see how things pan out in the long run.

I came up with the following math for the $500,000 pot. Amazon states the pot will be at least $6million in 2012 (still comes out to a $500,000 pot per month???).

Wow, that is some good information to think about. I know that I don't get a lot of sales from barnes and nobles. My biggest month was in October, and it was just under 500. I just discovered smashwords a couple of weeks ago and have recieved about a 100 sales, but I get between 150 and 200 a day on amazon, so it seems like it is worth it to give it a try for a three month period, and if the royalties are reallly bad then I can go back to smashwords and the others. Really if you are on smashwords, you don't have to individually publish on the other sights because they do it for you. I like them too because they make sure your formatting is correct. I would like to here how everyone does over the next couple of months too, just to see if it really is worth the exclusivety. Only time will tell.

I just read through that article and the discussion afterwards, and I can see points from both ends. the exclusive thing is bothersome, but there are good points for authors that choose not to participate because it is going to take a lot of books off the market, making their own books more visible at places like smashwords and barnes and noble and apple. The chance to get pieces of that half million is tempting too. It is just a really hard choice for people to make on what is the right decision. I think a lot of it will have to do with how much time you have been out, and if you have established higher ranks on the other sites.

It looks to me as if the primary benefit would go to Amazon and not to the typical author. Generally speaking, I don't like

the idea of giving away free access to one of my books. Reduced pricing temporarily? That'd sound better. I don't see any great

problem with exclusivity with Amazon for a limited period of time. Amazon's Kindle already held two-thirds of the e-book business over the course

of the past year or so. But the business is going to change as rapidly as it grows over the course of the next year or two. A tremendous number of

I-Pads are going to be bought and many people will read their e-version on that product. The lending program gives Amazon one more good

hook, drawing customers into the habit of tying into the overall Kindle library.

But gaining exposure by giving away free books has never appealed to me. Has to be a better way from the author's

perspective. In "Hetman's" case, he sells one heckuva lot of e-books (Number one in sales in the U.K and number two in the U.S., as I understand.

That's not typical though.

Anyhow, I'm convinced that Amazon will continue to grow its market share one way or another in terms of e-book sales. And this recent lending program is certainly interesting. Will probably benefit Amazon a great deal. The biggest challenge to them from a marketing standpoint is how to position the Kindle brand as a mark associated with good, easy access to e-versions of books. They need to be careful not to allow the public only to think of "Kindle" as a particular piece of hardware likely to become outdated very quickly.

Okay, Alex. How do we know a book has been borrowed? Email? Dashboard? A little birdie waking you up in the morning pecking at your ear? Enquiring Minds Want To Know... Sorry, you may not be familiar with the tag line for the National Enquirer OUR version of yellow sheet journalism without Page 6.